Primary Data

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51 questions. It is therefore suggested by Saunders et al. (2009), that the overall design of the questionnaire should be carefully considered in order to maximize the validity and reliability of the data collected. In this, aspects such as; the individual questions, pleasing and clear layout, explanation of the purpose and pilot testing should be considered. Also, in comparison to interviews where different themes and issues can be explored further and more in detail, a questionnaire needs to be precisely designed prior to data collection, as the approach does not allow for additional data to be collected.

As this study has used a questionnaire in order to explore the attitudes of Main Street Businesses, where the TAM as well as the external variables PCV, trust and STB have been incorporated, the design of the questionnaire have been influenced by prior research utilizing the framework in similar manners. Thus, the specific questions, in terms of both PU and PEOU, asked in the questionnaire have been influenced by and adopted from Davis (1989), who is the originator of the TAM. Questions with regards to PCV have then been influenced by and adopted from Sheth et al (1991), Sweeney and Soutar (2001) and Sivathanu (2019), who all have included the factor in their studies of customer attitudes. STB and questions with regards to it have been influenced by and adopted from studies also incorporating the factor (Hsu & Lin, 2016; Lin, 2007; Sivathanu, 2019) Although not necessarily applied in the same context previously, as trust also have been identified as significant within banking (Suh & Han, 2002; Lee et al., 2007; Omarini, 2018), questions have consequently been developed accordingly. As such, the questionnaire and the design of it have been influenced by multiple studies which have previously included the different factors in their specific research. The design of the questionnaire has therefore been based on previous studies and their individual layouts, but has also been adapted to better fit with the purpose of this study. Lastly, as several scholars argue for that specific solutions providing e.g. a holistic situational view, actionable insights and a way to connect with the financial service provider would be especially beneficial (Ropega, 2011; Dahmen &

Rodriguez, 2014; Moscalu et al., 2019), this study decided to include examples of specific, related solutions to test whether the respondents consider these to be especially alluring to their situation.

Furthermore, by comparing the results of the questions relating to PU and PEOU (which are related to Open Banking as a topic) with these specific solutions, we will be able to gain various insights into e.g. how to communicate with Main Street Businesses i.e. if they have a high responsiveness towards the solutions but low PU according to the PU questions, we would be able to argue for that in order

52 to reach Main Street Businesses it is more important to communicate the solution over the underlying technology.

For the distribution, layout and collection of the questionnaire, the experience management software Qualtrics, which is owned by SAP, was used. Qualtrics is a tool which enables the user to easily design questionnaires, collect feedback from the respondents as well as centralize the feedback collection (Qualtrics, 2020a). The reason for using Qualtrics over other possible software was partly because of the free access through Copenhagen Business School, and partly because of its user friendly interface, a design which the authors deemed appealing, its ability to analyse data, as well as the function to export the data into sources that could be used in e.g. Tableau, R and MS Excel.

For the questionnaire itself, the structure was designed with what can be described as a problem to solution structure. First, the researchers´ wanted to find out some basic information of the businesses that were surveyed, such as how their current situation looks, how they view their relationship with their current financial service provider (i.e. bank) and how open they are to explore financial services outside of their current service provider. The logic behind this was to find out a “status quo” for the Main Street Businesses, before they were introduced to Open Banking, and the possible benefits that might follow. In this section, we took the opportunity to ask questions with regards to their trust and their stickiness to traditional banking as the expressed opinions in this section not had been anchored towards anything but their bank relationship. The second part of the Questionnaire focused on Open Banking, and the respondents´ attitudes towards possible Open Banking services. Here, the respondents were introduced to Open Banking through the basic information, a possible scenario and the purpose of PSD2, i.e. to enable competition between banks based on customer interaction and quality of services (Hallsworth et al., (2018). Thereafter, questions relating to their first impression, PU, PEOU, Trust and Stickiness to Traditional banking were asked. With regards to trust and STB, we chose to test this both before and after the Open Banking introduction because we wanted to see if their attitudes changed once they were familiarised with the concept i.e. if they would consider different types of service providers once they were introduced to the concept.

53 4.5.1.2 Interviews

The second part of this study utilized interviews in order to collect the data necessary to answer the research question. Interviews can, according to Saunders et al (2009), provide data that can be seen as both reliable and valid. In this, there are three different types of interviews where they differ in terms of their formality and standardization. Thus, interviews move along a range, where structured interviews are highly standardized interviews asking all participating respondents the same set of questions. On the contrary, unstructured interviews are informal and less structured talks where there is no predetermined set of questions to be asked. In between structured and unstructured are semi-structured interviews, where the researchers´ prepare a set of themes to be covered, but where the questions covering all themes can differ between interviews. As such, semi-structured interviews can be structured differently depending on the respondent, and the order of the questions asked can be varied depending on the flow of the conversation. Semi-structured, as well as unstructured interviews can therefore be regarded as advantageous when undertaking an exploratory study, as it enables the researchers´ to ask the respondent to further elaborate, explain and build on different questions and themes. Also, with more unstructured interviews being more flexible, it allows for the interview and discussion to move into areas not previously considered by the researchers (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2015). With the exploratory purpose of this study in mind, both the semi-structured and unstructured type of interviews were deemed as the most suitable for this study to fulfil its purpose.

As this study is a single-case study, where the company Tink has been used to get insights into the operations of a company operating within Open Banking, the interviews were held with employees at the company. The two Tink employees were selected based on their expertise and role in the company, where interviewee 1 (I1) is CTO and one of the co-founders, and interviewee 2 (I2) is Head of Communication. Hence, both respondents were identified as being highly relevant in providing this study with market-specific information, as well as knowledge and details regarding their operations and their perception of the Main Street Business segment as potential consumers. With both of the respondents working within separate parts of the company´s operations, they could both provide the study with their individual perspective and a nuanced viewpoint. Both respondents were therefore deemed suitable to provide this study with highly relevant information with regards to how a company operating within the Open Banking environment possibly could create, deliver and capture value from the Main Street Business segment. Thus, the interviews will provide this study with company-specific information in this explorative study on the strive towards a Small Business Utopia.

54 Both interviews revolved around the themes of introducing a new technology to a market, strategy and business model, where the components of value - creation, delivery, and capture were included.

As such, the themes guide the questions asked to the respondents, where pre-formulated questions were included as guidelines and follow-up questions were adapted based on the conversation and responses. However, in order to ensure that all interviews resulted in relevant and sufficient data, a checklist was prior to the interview set up in order to ensure that all relevant themes and topics were thoroughly discussed. All interviews lasted between 30-45 minutes and were held in Swedish as it is the native language of both interviewees and researchers. Moreover, both interviews were held online in a virtual conference room. Mainly because of the current circumstances due to the Covid-19 outbreak, but also due to the geographical dispersion of the researchers´ and respondents, as well as the limited time horizon of this study. At the start of all interviews, the purpose of the study was provided, as well as a brief outline of what will be included in the interview. The entire length of the interviews was recorded and later transcribed, as it allows for direct quotes to be generated and used in the results and analysis (Saunders et al., 2009). However, no transcription can be seen as entirely complete as some elements are lost when converting oral interviews into text (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2015). Although a transcription does not incorporate the way in which the answers are communicated, the main objective is to mirror the answers of the respondents and the insights and knowledge that is provided. Both of the interview guides can be found in Appendix 10.4.

4.5.1.3 Case Company: Tink

In order to fulfil the second part of this study’s purpose and investigate how Main Street Businesses can be served by Open Banking initiatives, primary data has, as earlier discussed, been collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews with the Swedish API provider and Open Banking frontrunner Tink. The company was founded in Stockholm in 2012 with the mission of improving the banking industry for the better (Tink, 2020b). Originally based on the idea to provide end-consumers with an application for their private economy, the business model has in recent years pivoted towards providing banks and other financial firms with the opportunity to develop their own solutions through their API, which has resulted in them winning an award for the most innovative business model in Sweden in 2019 (Cordial, 2020). Through their pivot, they have had the opportunity to capitalize on Open Banking initiatives, which have enabled them to become one of the leaders in

55 Europe within their market segment (ibid) and has as such developed an API consisting of broad possibilities for banks to develop upon. To simplify things, their current offering could be summarised into three steps: (1) The customer – e.g. a bank - connects to Tink’s API and gets access to data from over 2500 European banks (Tink, 2020b). (2) The bank then gets the possibility to develop solutions for their customers based on this data. At the offset, there are four different solutions which can either be combined or be treated as standalone: account aggregation, payment initiation, data enrichment and personal finance management (Tink, 2020a). (3) The bank now gets the opportunity to know their customers through access and analysis of their data while given the possibility to offer them tailored and effective solutions involving services such as credit scoring, autofill and price comparison.

For our purpose, Tink was deemed a highly suitable company to interview in order to get insights into what Open Banking can do in practice and how business models could look based on the trend.

Their suitability is based on their proven innovative capacity as 2019’ winner of the business model award in Sweden (Cordial, 2020), broad offerings (Tink, 2020a), expertise within Open Banking (Tink & YouGov, 2019; Tink & YouGov, 2020), and Swedish heritage. While they might not be experts in small businesses and their situation, Tink is arguable the type of company that would be able to provide financial organisations with the possibilities to assist them. Hence, their expertise would give us insights into both how and what type of solutions could be developed based on our insights from the Main Street Businesses. To make it more tangible, take the aforementioned example of small business lending - whereas credit scoring previously has in large taken a long time and comparing firms to similar firms rather than their individual capabilities (Mills, 2019), Tink’s offering, if adopted by e.g. a bank would not only provide an analysis based on the firm’s individual data across potentially 2500 banks, it would also be done in real time (Tink, 2020c).